


kind word alone

by coricomile



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: M/M, Mental Health Issues, Psychopathology & Sociopathy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-05-24
Updated: 2012-05-24
Packaged: 2017-11-05 22:59:06
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,462
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/411959
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/coricomile/pseuds/coricomile
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>If the world is nothing more than a toy, the people are just it's cogs.</p>
            </blockquote>





	kind word alone

The world is a toy. It spins and shudders and spits out lives, spits out murder and grief and joy in unplanned turns, makes and takes without discrimination. There's vast mystery inside its candy shell, nothing but bright colors hidden under a bit of muck, all things on its insides waiting to be shaken off and made new again. And people-

If the world is nothing more than a toy, the people are just it's cogs.

Sherlock dissects his first squirrel at six. He's an easily bored child, skipped up years in school for his surprising intelligence. His brother is a right prat and the children at school are too dull to distract him from the ever present avalanche of thoughts that fill him from hair to socks. There's no reason to it, not really, but he names his victory for the good of science.

The fur is soft against the palms of his hands, the creature's tiny heart beating rapidly until Sherlock snaps its fragile neck. He feels the stiffness start in the small body, feels the warmth drain away with something like clinical detachment. The animal's jaw stays open, yellowed teeth bared and eyes stuck open. Sherlock touches its paw, tries to move its arm but finds he can't. Not without snapping it off.

He is a child of science and a child of means, but he is still ill equipped to do a proper dissection. The china plate he's brought to be a work table is barely large enough for the squirrel's body, the paring knife too big and clumsy in the palm of his hand. There's a rush of what he imagines excitement must be in his chest as he lowers the knife to the animal's chest.

It takes more pressure than he had assumed it would to cut the beast open.

Once he's inside- once the curtain of skin and bone has been peeled away, clumsily but efficiently, to reveal the main stage of muscle and organ- silence descends down over Sherlock's ever ticking mind. This. This is something fascinating, something worth investigating and discovering and learning. 

When he's done prodding at tiny bones and drawing apart stiff, pink muscle, he buries the creature, the plate, and the knife under the tree farthest away from the house. Mummy has already expressed worry over him. If Mycroft were to find evidence of his experiment, he'd tattle to her right away, which would hinder his future investigations.

Sherlock may only be a child, but he is still brilliant beyond his years. This is a thing that never changes.

 

\---

It's easy to hide the lack of feeling. Sneering is an acceptable analog for anger, twisting up his mouth mimics happiness, and crying gets him biscuits until he's twelve. These are facts, tested and proven and nothing more.

Sherlock reads and studies and learns, mind growing faster than his body, world spanning out beyond him in a race that he cannot seem to stop running. He knows he should _feel_ things, whatever that may mean, but mostly he feels curiosity. The burning, aching need to know absolutely everything grating under his skin until he can barely control himself. 

The backyard experiments ended at eight. While fascinating, they really were just child's play, similar results with different colors, a way to distract rather than learn more. It had been disappointing to find himself bored with the tiny hearts and livers and lungs, no longer interested in merely learning placement and size and heft.

He does wonder what he would look like on the inside. He's seen textbooks and videos, knows in theory where every nerve lies, but he feels the tug sometimes to peel back his own skin, to see his body work like the machine it is. To watch his heart tremble and his muscles stretch, see the flow of blood from artery to vein to twitching nervous system. If he could, he'd lay himself out bit by bit to study. 

Mycroft knows there is something wrong with him. Sherlock can feel the way he watches, eyes narrowed in his round face. They've been blessed- cursed- with the same hyper-awareness. Sherlock is meticulous about hiding his past time, is sure to cover every track and every detail. He knows what he does, while not illegal, is suspicious. Should Mycroft ever really see how off Sherlock is-

Well. It wouldn't end pleasantly.

Sherlock studies everything he can touch. His brain aches with how throughly it gets filled, stretches and expands and makes him have night terrors about being normal. About being stupid and dull and incompetent. When he comes across the term _sociopath_ in a psychology text, he tastes the word with something like curiosity.

Sociopath. It seems fitting of his symptoms, if nothing else. His lack of concern in fixing the matter just as damning as the rest of the evidence. He tucks it away in his mind like a sticky note, makes sure to remember the name should he ever need it again. He is only thirteen years old, but already he is an old man in his head.

\---

Carl Powers dies when Sherlock is fourteen. Accident, the news says. Tragic.

Mycroft has landed himself a place as a lackey of the queen, a hound dog lapping up scraps to climb up to the top. He tells Sherlock that he, too, could come into a bit of power if he would only stop being so distant and childish. Sherlock doesn't want power. He wants to stop being bored. It’s why he shows up at the scene of a death like a common rubbernecker. 

The pool where Carl drowns is a giant sort, full of noise that echoes off the walls and children screaming at the blue face of the teenager being dragged from the water. The sound of the ambulance is barely audible under the sheer ruckus, but it’s enough to tell Sherlock he’s got four minutes until the body is dragged away.

Really, he only needs two.

The boy is sixteen, dark skinned and thin. His eyes are buldged open, eyelids peeled back, stuck open with drying pool water. The chlorine has done funny things to his pupils, made his irises cloud. There's a bit of blood at the corner of his mouth, mixed up with air bubbles, froth like from the mouth of a rabid animal. Drowning, absolutely.

Sherlock narrows his eyes as he takes in the body's dimensions. Something is off. The boy is lean but muscled. He's clearly from a working class family, his skin weathered from work and chemicals. His arms are more developed than his legs. A swimmer drowning in the pool he often frequented. Irony or suspect. 

He stays even after the police have cleared the public away. Mycroft's name gives him access, his youth gives him edge. They think he's a silly child trying to follow in his brother's footsteps. Idiots. 

The paramedics take the body away in a bag, zipped up and hidden. Sherlock watches them gather up the boy's belongings in another bag, collecting data. There's a shirt and wallet, a crumpled towel that hasn't been washed for a few weeks. Something is wrong.

"Shoes," Sherlock says. He scowls when an officer sushes him, repeats himself louder. "Where are his shoes?" 

"Go home, kid," someone says. Sherlock barely hears him, mind already twisting up questions about a person that would steal a dead teenager's shoes.

"This wasn't an accident," he says. He says it again, shouts when he's escorted out of the building. "This wasn't an accident!"

He doesn't catch the killer, and the police refuse to hear his logic. It sparks anger in him. Imbeciles. How can they refute his superior knowledge? Age is merely a number of physical growth. He's more intelligent than the entirety of Scotland Yard and he can and will prove it.

\---

The drugs are nice, if a bit pedestrian. Sherlock spends the end of his teen years half out of his mind, shaky and numbed and almost pathetically normal. Cocaine makes his brain slow down, filters out the extra bits of every day life. It makes a waste out of his talents, but it gives him a- well. Feeling isn't the right word, but it gives him something.

Mycroft, the little snake, has managed to keep moving up in rank. In the middle of Sherlock's tests with heroin, he takes control of London. He's not even thirty, face still smooth and eyes still sharp. He winces whenever Sherlock calls him fat, even though he's long since dropped the weight of his youth. He controls the CCTV with an idle since of whim, makes sure that Sherlock knows he will never go unwatched. 

It's funny that he thinks Sherlock needs him. That he needs the drugs. Addiction is just a physical need, dopamine levels fluctuating in reaction to the stimulus. Sherlock has been teaching his mind to separate from his body since he was a child. If he wants to quit taking the drugs, he will full stop.

He goes on for a few years, playing the addict to sink under his brother's skin. There is always money in his bank account, and he barely has to do a thing to earn it. The tedium of it all is almost laughable. He thinks about saving up to buy a plane. Exploring could be interesting for a bit. Flying without lessons even more so.

Instead, he spends the money on lab equipment that he hides in his shoddy flat and weasels his way into the barely accepted graces of Scotland Yard. Mycroft always wanted him to make something of his life, after all. It would be boring to disappoint him.

\---

John Watson is fascinating. 

He screams in his sleep sometimes, damaged brain and damaged skin making a mess of him. Sometimes Sherlock watches, eyes narrowed against the dark, mind flipping over itself. He's read plenty of studies on PTSD, but seeing the effects in person is something entirely different. He wonders what John would do if he were to wake him up with a crash of the door, maybe a broom handle to the ceiling under his bed.

He claims that he doesn't want the danger of being Sherlock's flatmate, says he's mental for taking up the offer. Sherlock can't say he disagrees. It's another one of those interesting little tics that make Sherlock's mind wander. Silly man, Sherlock thinks, getting mixed up with someone who actually is mad.

They solve cases together- Sherlock solves cases, John makes idle observations and does the shopping. For all the dullness of him, John is something Sherlock sets his claws into. A fancy attachment for his shiny Earth toy. Poor man. Sad man, desperate for something to keep his mind off the thing he's become. Sherlock is creative. He's sure he can be some use there.

John has a crush. It's a stupid human trick, feelings that Sherlock will never be able go return even if he had the urge to. It's amusing, in a way to see John's eyes go bright and his mouth twitch every time Sherlock walks into a room. He wears his emotions on his sleeve, obvious for even the normal people to see. It's pathetic.

"You're staring," he says one night, tinkering with the focus on his microscope. He doesn't have to look up to see the way John goes a bit stiff, the way his face goes a bit red. Predictable.

For all that he is a simple man, John is Sherlock's, property claimed and marked and owned. Sherlock has never shared his toys well and never will. Manipulation is part of a sociopath's nature. Sherlock is not above playing dirty to keep what is his. 

"It's all right," Sherlock says. He mimics concern, makes his voice deeper and draws his eyebrows together. The pretending gets tedious, but John doesn't make him do it often. It's part of what makes him so shiny.

It still takes a month and a few near deaths until John sits too close to him on the sofa, before John slides a shaking hand- nerves, adrenaline making his muscles unsteady- onto Sherlock's knee. It’s trite but amusing, simple gestures that Sherlock’s seen John use on a long string of girlfriends. Simple, human interaction. Boring.

Still, he follows the script and acts his part, gives his correct answers to the questions John’s body language asks. It’s like dissecting an animal all over again, like looking into a chest cavity to see the ticking parts. Sherlock catalogues responses and sounds and the way John’s heart speeds up under his hand. Science, cool and clinical, a round of endorphins and hormones and _feelings_. 

John takes him to bed, does his rutting bit. Sherlock listens to his breathing, mimics the sounds being pressed into his shoulder. It could be pleasant if it wasn’t the end to a means, if it wasn’t taking away from time that could be spent on murders. Maybe he can trick himself into enjoying this physical thing later, when he’s got John locked into a forever contract with him. When he knows that he’s stamped his ownership on him permanently. 

\---

Fear is a funny thing. Sherlock stares at his shaking hands, tries to calm his racing heart. He’s petrified, and it’s all because of some bloody dog. The people in the cabin are staring at him like he’s mad, trying to shift their gazes when he glowers at them. Even John, his John, is acting like he’s gone off the deep end.

Maybe he has. 

Sherlock raves and shouts and tears their room apart, shaking. He misses cocaine, misses feeling calm and placid and stupid. John watches him, detached in the corner, eyes narrowed. He jams a fist into Sherlock’s stomach when Sherlock makes a lunge for him, sure and strong and steady. The fear and anger and doubt fly apart, leaving Sherlock gasping on the ground, hands clutched over the bruise he can already feel forming.

“Stop it,” John says. 

He looms over Sherlock, face going red and chest heaving like they’ve just had a roll about in the sheets. He kicks Sherlock’s shin with his bare foot, pulls back the force he could apply. He’s more worried than angry, concern stitched into the lines on his face. The dark circles under his eyes show how little he’s been sleeping, and the-

“That, right there. Stop it.” John kneels next to him, Adams apple bobbing as he swallows. His hand burns past Sherlock’s shirt, his skin. “You’re human, Sherlock. You’re not a machine. It’s okay to be afraid. You can have feelings and still be you. It’s all right.”

And there on the floor, pressed against John’s legs like a child, Sherlock laughs until he can’t breathe.


End file.
